Typically, items are delivered by making use of vans driven by a human driver. The items are loaded into the van at a depot. The van then drives from the depot to the address of the recipient of an item. The driver unloads the item to be delivered to the recipient, walks to the door of the recipient, rings the recipient's door bell and hands over the item to the recipient. The driver then walks back to the van and performs the subsequent deliveries.
While the above described process may be satisfactory in some instances, it has certain drawbacks, particularly with regard to efficiency and usage of resources (in particular, the time of the driver and fuel consumption). In light of such problems, US 2015/0379468A1 suggests to use small autonomous delivery vehicles (called a “secondary delivery vehicle” in the '468 publication) to perform the final step of delivery. While this solution may have some advantages vis-à-vis the classical delivery process, it is still far from optimal. That is, it also has some disadvantages and shortcomings. In particular, the delivery process described in US 2015/0379468A1 still requires a substantial amount of human labor. For example, the autonomous delivery vehicle is loaded manually and the delivery van itself (called a “primary delivery vehicle” in the '468 publication) typically is operated by a human driver. However, human labor may be too valuable to perform such simple tasks. Furthermore, the present process may still not be optimal as regards fail safety and efficiency (both as regards costs and usage of resources).
It is an object of the present invention to overcome or at least alleviate at least some of the shortcomings and disadvantages of the prior art. In other words, it is an object of the present invention to provide a storage system, use and method that are more efficient and/or more fail safe than the prior art.